


The Sea of His Eyes

by Lion_of_Eben



Series: The Bastards of Westeros [3]
Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Am I the only one to ship these two?, Feelings of the unrequited sort, I don't know what the point of this is., It just popped into my head at work., M/M, Probably., bastards
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 05:00:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,883
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9476765
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lion_of_Eben/pseuds/Lion_of_Eben
Summary: War is impending, but Daemon refuses to watch him leave.





	

_Aurane Waters should be married by now_ , Daemon thought idly. He watched ships bobbing lazily in the harbor and the glint of early sun over the relatively still sea. Granted, by any right, Daemon should be married himself, but it seemed that the reformation of the continent had slowed social norms. Daemon glanced down the docks to where Waters was talking to Aegon Targaryen. The conversation was likely unpleasant, but Daemon couldn’t hear the exact details over the scream of gulls and shift of waves.

It mattered little. The conversation was none of his business, and Aegon would relay its contents to Arianne in any case. He was only here to make sure Aurane refrained from drowning the king of Dorne, a feat easily managed. He watched them, anyway, just to make sure. Daemon trusted Aurane not to toss Aegon off the docks, but Aegon’s temper was considerably less controllable. 

The two men were of a height, their hair the same silvery blonde – though Aegon kept his hair cropped short while Aurane tied his hair near the nape of his neck. From this distance, they looked as though they could be twins, though Daemon knew that once he approached they would look as different as the sun and the moon. Aegon couldn’t have been much younger than Waters, not by more than three years, but Aegon’s face was still youthful and boyish while Aurane looked a man. Their eyes, the set of their jaws, the build of their bodies – all different. There was a confident ease about both of them, though, despite Aegon’s restless kinesthetic energy contrasting Aurane’s calculated laziness. Something in the set of their shoulders or curve of their spines, maybe.

Daemon watched as Aurane shifted his weight on his hips, his arms crossing over his chest, his head tilting just ever-so-slightly back. The familiar posture, the one Daemon knew signaled Aurane’s growing disinterest, encouraged the blooming ache of impending bereavement that had settled near his diaphragm. 

Daemon had met Aurane the better part of a decade ago in the Riverlands. Waters had been evacuating smallfolk from lands overrun with the dead, making good use of the fleet he had stolen from Cersei Lannister. Oddly, Aurane offered to sail Daemon’s forces to White Harbor, and thereafter went inland with them to combat the incursion at Winterfell. It had struck Daemon as unusual at the time, a pirate king without prompting selflessly sacrificing his youth to fight the dead in the bitter cold of northern winter. Aurane had never fully explained it himself, but Daemon gathered that he had been motivated in parts by an unusual loyalty to Stannis Baratheon, a curiosity for Rhaegar Targaryen’s bastard son, and a surprising humanity that best went unmentioned. 

He’d taken the Dornishmen back south after Snow had broken the Others. Waters returned to the Stepstones with his remaining ships, and had thereafter split his time between his holdings in the Narrow Sea, Storm’s End, and Sunspear attempting to negotiate trade with Aegon and Edric. Progress was slow, and though Aurane never spoke of it, Daemon knew he was internally seething with frustration.

At just this moment, though, it wasn’t Aurane who was overtly frustrated. Aegon’s voice raised, nearly shouting now, and he stabbed an index finger into Aurane’s chest, right above where his arms were crossed. 

_Oh, gods be fucking good._ Daemon started towards them as Aurane swatted Aegon’s hand away, turning to walk away. Aegon reached out, likely to forcibly pull Aurane back to the conversation, but Daemon called out to him first. 

“Your Grace,” he shouted. “Your Grace, Queen Arianne has requested your presence in your private chambers.” 

Aegon glared daggers at Daemon, and Daemon saw a half-smirk lift the corner of Aurane’s mouth. All three men knew it was a lie, and yet Aegon strode down the dock towards the harbor anyway. 

“Thank the gods he’s leaving and I’ll only have _you_ to deal with,” Aegon muttered on his way past Daemon. 

“I am pleased to continue my loyal service to you, Your Grace,” Daemon murmured, his voice too innocent to be unironic. 

“Oh, aye,” Aegon returned, walking backwards to ensure his voice projected towards Daemon. “Your service has been nothing but the greatest boon to myself and Dorne, Sand.” Aegon’s voice held a similar tone of ironic earnestness, though far more bitingly refined than anything Daemon could manage. 

Aurane let out a shout of laughter, raising an arm in farewell to Aegon. “May we never meet again, Your Grace,” he called, mirth laced through his words. 

“You’d best pray so,” Aegon tossed over his shoulder as his boots met the stone of the harbor. 

Daemon raised an eyebrow at Aurane, and Waters’ mouth quirked into a fuller grin. “He wanted me to represent Dorne’s interests at Storm’s End,” Aurane said, one shoulder raising into an aborted shrug. 

“You’re not Dornish.”

“Oh, truly? Our great dragonlord seems to be convinced that Driftmark lies squarely in the Marches.” 

Aurane stared at the sea, the curve of his smile falling in his contemplation. He was beautiful like this in the early hours of morning, the sun pulling gold out of his silvery hair, a lifetime of equal parts laughter and hardship carved along the edges of his eyes and mouth. Wind pulled strands of his hair from the knot at the base of his skull, and he raised a hand to impatiently rake the hair away from his face, leaving the palm of his hand resting on the crown of his head. Daemon reflexively resisted the urge to trace a finger along Aurane’s exposed side, absent-mindedly digging his fingernails into his palm instead.

There was a blatant, easy, confident sexuality about the bastard of Driftmark that Daemon knew he himself could never achieve. It was in the hold of his hips and the sea of his eyes and the shape of his smirk. Somehow, despite the casual ease with which Aurane could appreciatively drag his eyes over someone, Daemon could find no evidence of a lover. Arianne had once asked Daemon, promptly after he had returned from the North, who Aurane was fucking. Daemon blinked in surprise when he realized he did not know. Unusual, because he knew who everyone was fucking. Even more unusual because he had spent the past several years in close quarters with Aurane. 

Arianne had laughed, assuming Daemon was joking. After that, Daemon set out to find out who Aurane spent time with. He’d come up with no one. At first, he’d believed that perhaps Aurane had a woman at home, but Aurane never mentioned one, never seemed eager to return to the Stepstones for any reason beyond business. The man simply had no personal attachment. 

“I can’t believe our lady of the North is marrying a bastard who isn’t me,” Waters murmured. 

Well, no personal attachment besides Arya Stark. Though Daemon strongly suspected Aurane’s interest had more to do with Lady Arya’s lack thereof, and was at least partially ironic. 

“You don’t have to go,” Daemon said, tearing his eyes from Aurane and following his gaze over the waves. 

“I do. Lord Velaryon will be wroth, Edric will be wroth, Gendry will have me flayed. And it’ll be my last chance to woo Arya Stark,” he finished with a half-smile in his voice. 

Daemon barked out a shout of laughter. “She’ll never have you.” 

“You only say so because she hasn’t yet.” There was a moment of silence, companionable, the lull of the sea making the short seconds seem endless, lost in an unbroken continuum. But then Aurane did break it, his voice containing a sincerity that Daemon hadn’t heard in years. “This should be the last we see of each other.” 

The words slid from Daemon’s ears to a swirling pit of anxiety in his belly. 

Daemon sighed and tipped his head back to stare at the clouds, pressing the pad of his thumb between his eyes. “It doesn’t have to be.” 

“War is coming. Aegon wants to think that he can manipulate his family into a peaceable agreement, but he doesn’t have the wealth, lands, or capital to force them to submit. All he has is a dragon that he isn’t willing to risk in battle.”

“Danaerys can’t truly seek war after the blood that’s already been shed.” 

Aurane scoffed a bit, a short unamused laugh. “Danaerys is not one to avoid blood, Daemon.” 

Daemon ignored the way his name from Aurane’s mouth made him feel, ignored the way Aurane made it sound filthy and delicious at the same time regardless of the context.

“Snow was foolish. He is foolish. He should be consolidating power, working to strengthen House Targaryen, not giving the North to the Starks. Especially not after what he did at Lannister’s trial.” 

Aurane didn’t respond. He tended not to whenever Daemon criticized Rhaegar’s youngest, though Daemon could never tell if his silence was borne of grudging agreement or a desire to avoid an argument. 

“Will you fight?” Daemon asked, scarcely hoping that the man would respond with plans to settle in Essos. 

“You know I have to. We’re the Baratheon fleet.”

The words _Yes, but_ you _don’t have to_ were on the tip of his tongue. But Daemon knew they were childish. Aurane wasn’t an honorable man in the traditional sense of the word, but he was a moral one. He would never abandon his family in wartime, was equally less likely to abandon houses Baratheon and Stark. Waters protected the ones he loved. 

“I think, friend, if we meet again, it’ll be on the field of battle.” 

The words were true, but they cut Daemon all the same. It wasn’t Aurane doing this, he knew, it wasn’t his fault. He still felt small inside of it all, felt like a boy trapped inside a man. His eyes were dragged inexorably to Aurane’s ship. _Her Grace_ , he’d named her. The ship had been a symbol of dear memories for Daemon once. Twin grins on the Stark sisters’ faces, the first three steps of freedom from the oppressive cold, the signal he saw in the distance every time Aurane returned to Sunspear. Now it was just a dirty, splintered hull mockingly named after a dead madwoman. 

“There won’t be a war,” Daemon decided. “The realm won’t be able to bear it. Dorne won’t. Represent us, Aurane.” Daemon’s voice was near-feverish now, he could tell. “End the bloodspill before it begins. If you can convince Edric to pull his support from the Starks, Danaerys can quietly, peacefully exert her control over the North until Targaryen rule is established and the Starks don’t threaten the Triarchy.” 

Aurane didn’t reply. He just stood there, one hand clasped around the nape of his neck, a small smile curling along one side of his mouth. His eyes burned into Daemon’s, intense despite his nonchalance, before he let out a soundless chuckle. 

His hand reached for Daemon’s forearm, grasping it in goodbye. “Farewell, brother,” Aurane murmured warmly. 

The words _Kiss me_ were buried somewhere in Daemon’s lungs, but he simply returned Aurane’s grip and wryly replied “Be well, you foolish bastard.” 

Daemon left the docks before _Her Grace_ left port. He wouldn’t watch. His boots left the dull, hollow sound of wood to meet the cold resonance of stone.

**Author's Note:**

> Hi guys! If you're keeping up with And Their Walls Came Tumbling Down, I'm polishing off the newest chapter and hopefully it should be up soon. (Hopefully. If the stars align and the Norse gods are good.)
> 
> Thanks for reading. ^_^


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